It was the summer of 2014, Ray Shero, just two months after being fired by the Pittsburgh Penguins, was relaxing on a friend’s boat when his phone rang.

It was Mike Babcock.

“I’m thinking, I know I’ve got a Level 4 or 5 but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want me to coach,’’ Shero said with a chuckle Wednesday morning.

As it turns out, Babcock was looking to fill an assistant coach’s job on his Red Wings staff and wanted to pick his brain about Tony Granato, whom Shero had as an assistant coach for five years in Pittsburgh. What Babcock got was a whole-hearted endorsement from Shero on Granato, who did indeed eventually get hired in Detroit that summer.

While Shero’s Penguins and Babcock’s Red Wings played in two entertaining Stanley Cup finals in 2008 and 2009, the two had never really got to know each other.

That conversation in the summer of 2014, however, started a new relationship between Shero and Babcock, two...